Legacy Investing & Wealth Management Market Mondays – 1/2/17

I hope you had a spectacular holiday season and I wish you all the best as we begin a new year. My blog brought to you by Legacy Investing & Wealth Management gives you a quick and easy read focusing on stock market education, empowering the newer investor as well as giving you the most recent stock market analysis. For more information including past blogs please go to www.LegacyInvesting.net; look for the Market Mondays tab under “The Legacy” for all blogs.

Since it’s a new year I want to start with talking about cleaning up your credit or establishing credit and preparing for investments or major purchases in your future. If you have really bad credit and are thinking about hiring a credit restoration company, do your research on them. I discussed this in a prior blog but personally, I do not recommend it. There are lots of things you can do yourself to improve your credit rating without paying someone else to do it for you. If you don’t already check your credit annually, go to www.annualcreditreport.com and see what creditors are reporting about you. Anything that is inaccurate needs to be disputed and removed as soon as possible. The creditor has 30 days to look into your claim and if they do not respond then it can come off your credit report, which will start increasing your credit score. Repossessions, bankruptcies and foreclosures have a specific time limit they can be on your credit report so make sure you check the statute of limitations. Sorry y’all but the student loans do not come off…ever, until they are paid off.

If you don’t have much credit but are renting, make sure your rent payment history is being reported to the credit bureaus. If it’s not here is a link with more information on making sure it is being tracked – www.experian.com/rentbureau. If you’re paying your rent on time this should absolutely be reported which helps you in the long run. They say credit cards are the devil and that can be true if you have no discipline but having at least one or two can help you significantly increase your credit score. Build your credit score by keeping low credit card balances and paying them off completely every month. This helps you avoid finance charges and allows the monthly reporting about you to be a credit score booster. Finally, make sure you have at least several utilities or other bills in your name that you are consistently paying on time. For the older kids still at home, teach them about credit early and transfer that phone out of your name to theirs. Start making them responsible for making their payments on time and they will be simultaneously building good credit.

The last blog I wrote was the day before the US General Election and the media as well as the majority of us thought Hillary Clinton would be our next President. As we got the surprise of our lives, the Dow quickly dropped over 800 points but staged a stunning recovery and rally the next day which continued through the end of the year.

A Trump victory was believed to be supportive of a recession but a Republican run House AND Senate was not factored in so the uncertainty around more gridlock and business-friendly policies subsided. This is the reason the stock market rallied so heavily and it may continue in 2017 as tax cuts and aggressive fiscal policies become reality. In essence, a recession will happen at some point but it doesn’t appear as likely as it did before the election. Economic expansion is likely to continue for now as employment is at multi-year highs, wage growth is appearing to be on the rise, the housing market and corporate profits are strong, and US GDP (Gross Domestic Product) is expected to increase due to big corporate tax cuts and heavy infrastructure spending by the new administration. This could continue for some time before growth begins slowing and the stock market starts falling.

I attached a monthly chart of the S&P 500 performance since the Great Recession with trend lines drawn to show areas of support and resistance. I’ll talk more about that in future blogs but for now support is the bottom red line and resistance is the top line. Our current situation is at the far right side where we are in the middle of these trend lines. We have some room to go either to the upside or downside but any selling we have should be fairly brief as we keep moving higher. This is of course given we don’t have some major catastrophe to deal with.

I added some notes on this chart with areas where investors would have made serious money buying and selling the market. This is an example of technical analysis which we will talk more about later. Trend lines and moving averages are just a few of the technical indicators I use when buying and selling the stock market.

Please visit our website at www.LegacyInvesting.net and contact us today for a FREE consultation on becoming financially fit and learning how to make money investing in the stock market. You can make money in ANY type of market (bull or bear). When we meet I’ll give you more information about our services and find out what your financial goals are. If I can help you, we can move forward; if not, no problem but I’m always just a phone call away from any questions or quick advice you want. Get your finances in shape for the New Year. Let’s connect and build generational wealth together.

Disclaimer – Legacy Investing & Wealth Management LLC or any of its advisers are not liable in any way for any losses incurred through trading by readers of this weekly blog. Any information or strategies of trading suggested here involve risk of capital loss and this weekly blog is not considered investment advice. Individuals who invest in securities are solely and completely responsible for any and every outcome that may occur.

About legacyinvesting2015

Doug Hayes has always had a mindset of entrepreneurship and wealth building. He started his first business (a community newspaper called “Doug’s Monthly”) at 12 years old. Having always shown an interest with numbers and budgetary management, Doug pursued a Bachelor of Business Administration degree at Howard University, graduating in 1996. By the age of 23, he bought his first house and by 25 he was running his own successful limousine and sedan service in the Detroit, MI area.
Doug invested in more real estate beginning in 2006, then in 2008 he saw many good companies substantially undervalued in the stock market because of the financial crisis. It was absolute panic so he took a chance on a few companies, knowing we would eventually come out of the recession and made a profit. He educated himself on investing in the stock market through continuous research and surrounding himself with other traders. He took control of his own 401K and established an IRA account by transferring old 401K’s into it. This gave him flexibility to use various strategies to yield better returns.
Doug's own finances have seen highs and lows so he designed a budget system he calls The Roadmap to Financial Freedom. This system helped him to stay focused in paying down debt, saving money, and planning for an early retirement.
Seeing an absence of financial literacy in our society coupled with his Christian roots, Doug developed a passion for helping others become successful in financial management. Through the experience he’s gained trading the stock market, he wants to help people develop a road map for building generational wealth. He says "many people have a misconception of the stock market because of their lack of knowledge, but it has proven to be the biggest wealth creator known to man." With Doug’s 20-plus years of experience in financial management, customer service and sales, he wants to educate and help you create a legacy that can be passed down for generations to come.
Contact Legacy Investing & Wealth Management today for a free consultation.